Today's Legion spotlight is on quests from the Death Knight Order Hall Campaign. We also have news on the upcoming Warcraft graphic novel prequel and some blue posts including Alpha raid testing today.

Edit: Added many blue posts including Pruning, PvP, and Legion Goals.

Death Knight Order Hall Campaign

This Legion build enabled additional Death Knight Order Hall campaign quests. In the video, we cover the quests to rescue Koltira and raise three of the new Four Horsemen. The quest to find Koltira starts at 17:54 and raising the Horsemen starts at 1:47, 8:36, and 23:29. Spoiler warnings within! Please use our spoiler tags if you are discussing the video in the comments.

Warcraft Movie Teaser

Could we be getting another trailer soon?

Warcraft Graphic Novel Prequel

The upcoming Warcraft movie is getting a prequel graphic novel called Warcraft: Bonds of Brotherhood. It will be published by Legendary with a story by Blizzard’s Chris Metzen that will be written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Mat Broome, Michael O’Hare, Eddie Nunez, Roy Allan Martinez, Ale Garza, and Mike Bowden.

Product Description:

Discover how three of Azeroth’s greatest champions forged their first alliance, in the official graphic prequel to the Warcaft movie from Legendary, Universal Pictures and Blizzard Entertainment.

In a fantasy action epic set decades before the film, the young and headstrong Llane, Lothar, and Medivh embark on a mission of vengeance that will forge them into heroes… the kind of heroes Azeroth will need in its darkest hour.

On Pruning, PvP, and Legion Goals

Lore

So, let’s talk about pruning. I’d like to give some clearer insight into what we’re trying to achieve, and the type of feedback we’re looking for. Warning: there are likely to be many, many words here.

What you’re seeing in Legion falls under one of two different goals:

Refocusing each spec around their core concepts

Reduced reliance on cooldowns, both offensive and defensive

I’ll explain these one at a time.

On refocusing: Over the years, as we’ve attempted to add new toys for every class in each expansion, we feel that the gameplay of quite a few specs has drifted away from the philosophies and ideals behind them. For some classes, such as Rogue, the specs don’t really feel very different from each other. For others, such as Priest, the differences are purely mechanical; Discipline uses absorbs, and Holy uses direct healing, but it’s not really clear why.

So, in Legion, we’re taking a hard look at what each spec should make you feel like when you’re playing it, and making sure that the abilities you’re using tie into that. When we talk about “class fantasy,” that’s more or less what we mean. It’s also made us realize that, frankly, we’ve made some mistakes over the years. Each spec is supposed to have some strengths and weaknesses, and as we’ve added abilities to shore up those weaknesses, we’ve diminished the value of their strengths.

Compare a Mage to a Warlock, for example. Mages were supposed to be highly mobile, but very squishy if you can lock them down; Warlocks were supposed to be able to take more direct punishment, but have a harder time getting away. But then we started giving Warlocks more mobility, which meant we had to give Mages more survivability, and nowadays those differences are subtle at best. The two classes should feel a lot more distinct than they do, both to play as and to play against. That means dialing back the mobility for Warlocks, and dialing back the survivability for Mages.

End result: Yes, you’ve probably lost a couple tools in Legion. But so have other people. So, when we get feedback along the lines of “Now I don’t have any way to deal with X”… we might actually think that’s a good thing. In PvP, this means you’re going to rely on your teammates a little more often. In a raid or dungeon, it means you might not want to purposefully stack Warlocks just because “they have the best numbers.”

On cooldowns: We’ve gotten a ton of feedback over the past couple of expansions that players feel like they aren’t able to do much without cooldowns active. When a Ret Paladin uses Avenging Wrath, Holy Avenger, and Execution Sentence all at once, they hit like a freight train carrying a truck full of bricks, but as soon as those effects end, they just kind of… keep themselves busy until their cooldowns are back up. “Your class is fun and exciting 17% of the time” isn’t awesome.

We’ve also gotten to the point where there’s entirely too many “get out of jail” cards in PvP. The Mage is in trouble… Ironbark. In trouble again… Nature’s Swiftness. Then Ice Block. Then another Ironbark. Then a trinket. Then Nature’s Swiftness. Then maybe, if you’re really good, you can get the Mage’s second Ice Block before Ironbark comes up again. He had to use Cold Snap, what an amazing play!

I’m obviously exaggerating here – most of the time, your goal is to force several of those cooldowns at once – but that kind of illustrates the point. In order for a kill to ever happen, things have to get excessive. So, in Legion, we want to chill out on just how strong those cooldowns can be, so that we can let you be more effective once they’ve worn off. Theoretically, we could accomplish that by just making the numbers on those cooldowns lower, but that quickly gets to the point where each individual cooldown just feels flat. “Increases damage by 5% for 20 seconds” just isn’t that exciting. Our only real alternative is to reduce how many cooldowns you have available, so that the ones that are left can still feel substantial.

Now then, on feedback: We recognize that all of these changes are pretty scary, and we’ve been in the MMO business long enough at this point to know better than to assume we’ll get everything right on the first try. So, let’s talk about feedback, and what you can do to help us make Legion an amazing expansion.

Many players have already been providing great feedback and bringing up good points of discussion, which we’re extremely grateful for, and have already made several changes that were influenced by that feedback. For example, pretty early on in the Legion Alpha, we decided against our original thought of removing resurrection spells from non-Healer specs (such as Shadow, Enhancement, or Balance). A lot of you thought that felt weird, and we agreed. More recently, several PvPers have expressed concern that Legion is currently too focused on simply dealing damage, and there aren’t enough opportunities for a skilled player to shine. That’s a big concern of ours as well, and one we’re doing our best to avoid.

However, sometimes good feedback gets so bogged down in hyperbole that it’s hard for us to tell if the point you’re making is based on actual concerns and testing, or if you’ve just been misinformed. For example, one complaint we see a lot is that “classes only have 5 or 6 spells in Legion.” That’s simply not true – as of this post, most specs have between 20 and 25 baseline abilities, with talents, Honor talents, and your Artifact active skill adding up to 5-10 abilities on top of that (and yes, we recognize that not all of those skills will be useful in all situations).

So, the biggest thing that can help us understand your concerns is to be as specific as possible. “I have too few abilities” is certainly a reasonable opinion, but that doesn’t tell us why you feel that way. Instead of leaving at that, try to expand on it a bit:

What specific ability do you miss, and why do you feel it’s important?

If you’re concerned that your spec will be too weak in a given scenario, what makes you feel that way? Do you feel you shouldn’t be? Why?

If you want more abilities, but are taking passive talents instead of active ones, why is that?

Are the new abilities your spec has in Legion not doing it for you? Why not?

Those are obviously just some examples, but that’s the sort of feedback that lets us really understand what your specific concerns are. And while there are certainly going to be cases in which we just disagree (we’re always going to do what we feel is right for the game), pointing out the underlying issues goes a long way towards making sure we recognize when we need to improve.

Raid Testing 4/15

Legion Raid Testing continues this Friday and Monday. We are still updating our Legion database for the recent build due to file changes, but you can get a general sense of the encounters on the Legion Dungeon Journal.

Watcher

On Friday, April 15, and Monday, April 18, we will continue our Legion Alpha raid testing.

Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Mythic, of course, requires 20 and does not scale.

There are a couple of bugs active in the current build - the obvious phasing issue, and an issue that causes many player abilities (and some boss abilities) to not properly consume resources. We have a hotfix in flight for the second issue as I write this; the phasing issue is under investigation, but shouldn't impact raid tests. Of course, should anything change on that front, we'll update our testing plans accordingly.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of an alpha environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the boss being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

Watcher

Oh yes, forgot to mention this. From now on, we should be fully unlocking artifact traits while you are raid testing (item level scaling has been adjusted accordingly).

Edit: To clarify, the expectation is NOT that you'd have a fully maxxed artifact by the time you were doing Ursoc. We're scaling item level down a bit to adjust for this, but this lets us get better feedback on artifacts in a raid setting.He also has far too little health right now. Working on a hotfix to adjust that.

Legion Blue Posts

Sigma

You guys have pretty much figured it out, but, right--the passive damage increase on the artifact should not increase Espiazione healing. The traits on the artifact itself should ultimately increase Disc's total healing ability (including both Espiazione and non-Atonement) by the same amount as the other healers' artifacts. We do want to figure out how to make this clearer.

Disc should be able get use out of DPS trinkets, but we have to make sure they're not overpowered. For example, they have to add less healing than healing trinkets. Luce Stellare Corrotta as the twin problems of being AoE (which will always risk being overpowered for Espiazione purposes) and being an RPPM proc (which results in it adding the same amount of DPS to Disc's low damage as it does to a caster's high damage). We will likely reduce RPPM proc rates for Disc on trinkets like this.What kind of trinket rules should we be able to expect? Anything that does spell damage = atonement? Or only holy/shadow spell damage?

Not finalized yet. Worth pointing out, there is something to be said for the option of not letting any of them Atone, which would let us tune them around damage alone for Disc. That would probably mean a minor proc rate reduction compared to casters, rather than a very substantial one. And it would maintain the use cases for trinkets more clearly and consistently with other healers--healer trinkets for healing, DPS trinkets only for DPS use (so rarely in serious content). Either is an option; we want to see how it plays out in testing.

The main point above was that, in ether case, we don't want caster trinkets to be better for healing. Disc can get caster trinkets (necessarily, since Shadow uses them), and they can have some damage or damage+healing value, but they shouldn't be desirable for main role use in challenging content.

Sigma

Chain Lightning consumes all 3 charges of Stormkeeper

Thanks, this should be fixed next build.

Blizzard

Final continent wide taxi pass is in progress right now. This should be improved soon™ :)

Muffinus

Not that big of a thing, but I feel it would be nice to have a little more information about the time remaining on world quests as simply having it listed as medium, very long, etc. leaves it a little too vague. It would be nice to be able to see the time remaining in days/hours/minutes to get a better idea of how much longer they'll be around.

Thanks for the feedback. We will be swapping it to the same notation as buffs are currrently (a single number, like "2h" or "49s").

Muffinus

Hi all,

After finally playing through the entire scenario after multiple bugs preventing me from completing it (group just stops moving or moves back, DC caused it to error out, Jaina never creates ice bridge, etc), I have to say its pretty fun smashing the Legion.

That being said, I really wish this wasn't an individual scenario. Meaning, I wish that I was participating with real players as I moved through this scenario. I think it would be amazing to do this with 10 or more other real players fighting alongside the NPCs.

I understand that this is the intro to Legion and it would create problems later on down the road when no one is queuing up for it. Maybe we could make it flexible? Or do it similarly to the way the siege of Undercity worked where it would run every 10 or so minutes after someone queues up. Maybe even be able to queue up as a group or raid and have it scale to our raid size.

I want more real player interaction in the open world (scenario in this case), and I feel this is an excellent place to do that.

TLDR: The scenario for the Broken Shore is great content, I just wish we could experience it with other real players.

Thanks for the feedback! What you're seeing is a consequence of the current beta concurrency. The Broken Shore Scenario supports up to 20 allied players at once (and eventually, 20 Horde as well).

New tech allows you to queue and be placed in the scenario immediately, without waiting for a full 20 players. For the first 20 seconds of the boat ride, other players can be placed in the instance, up to the cap of 20.

This will allow you to play a player-filled scenario during the first few weeks of the expansion launch, and continue to play Broken Shore much later in the expansion when less than 20 players are present in the queue.

This also means that the scenario should be fun for both groups of 20 and solo players, please let us know your thoughts!

Muffinus

Moo.

I'm curious if the available world quests are the same for everyone, so you can do them with friends?

One thing I remember about the garrison campaign quests from Taanan, the weekly ones, you received them in a random order, one per week, which made them awkward to coordinate doing with friends.

Yes! One of our major design goals for the endgame of Legion is getting players out into the world with friends to do activities.

A few things help accomplish this:

1) Everyone in your entire region will see the same World Quests. Invite your cross-server friends, you can all do the same activities!*

2) Similarly, everyone will see the same loot (or a fallback). If a world boss spawns and is going to drop a mount this week, everyone will see (on the World Quest UI) the mount.**

Commenti

Commento di Kornilius

on 2016-04-15T14:00:14-05:00

I don't get what they mean by being unable to remove Artifact Relics. If it's not like glyphs, where you pay a small fee for powder/tome to change between any of the glyphs you have already learned as you like, then will changing relics be like changing gems, i.e. destroy the old to implement the new?

Commento di Astrania

on 2016-04-15T14:00:58-05:00

I thought that relics were going to work like gems in gear, except they may/may not be destroyed when you replace it?

Commento di Wolfrick

on 2016-04-15T14:05:48-05:00

To be constructive, I can say that the way blizzard is focusing on CLASS immersion is EXTREAMLY AMAZING... a lore person as I am, it is Allmost like I am Forced by my own curesoity to level up each class ^^

and this is much... Since I Usualy just have 1 max level Character.

but the way Blizzard is focusing on World Immersion, class Immersion, and even CLASS "SPEC" immersion.... is amazing....

this is what we want this is what we love and this is WORLD OF WARCRAFT!

Love you Blizzard, Keep this up.

PS "little carrion bird told me to keep your eyes on the net on the 19th of this month." They just love to make us curious! (You Tricksters "But I love it") ^^

Commento di liotie

on 2016-04-15T14:26:44-05:00

That book cover is so cheesy.

Commento di Skildar

on 2016-04-15T15:16:20-05:00

guyz, that is some high level of stupidity...You post a huge video entitled "KOLTIRA raising the champions" with a picture of each of the horsemen and a note spoilers inside. But the mere picture and title are crazy spoilers too!I want news about the next expansion not every details about what happens in each class order narrative quests. Stop doing this plz! Thunderfury news ruined that for me too, just stopped doing it.Put a blank picture of the order class environnement with a huge spoiler sign and name the video narrative $class quest if you have to but stop spoiling it for those just passing by to get some unrevealing news...

Commento di Sounalius

on 2016-04-15T16:09:54-05:00

You'd think Sally Whitemane would RESIST serving the Scourge, the enemy she's held a powerful grudge against for the longest time, more than most crusaders. Her parents succumbed to the plague, and she was forced to destroy them. Now, she willingly accepts fate as a new soldier of the undead?

What is this Blizzard?

Commento di Olkard

on 2016-04-15T16:43:54-05:00

Come on Wowhead, seriously..? There's no point in warning of spoilers if you're going to show pictures before people can even click on it... Sure, we don't know who three of them are, but I would have liked to not know who ANY of them are. Please don't put videos at the top of the page in the future please.

Anyway, when are you updating the artifact calculator? Blizzard mentioned that Frost and Unholy DK's had significant talent changes and I would like to see them.

Commento di DeadAnimus

on 2016-04-15T16:57:33-05:00

You'd think Sally Whitemane would RESIST serving the Scourge, the enemy she's held a powerful grudge against for the longest time, more than most crusaders. Her parents succumbed to the plague, and she was forced to destroy them. Now, she willingly accepts fate as a new soldier of the undead?

What is this Blizzard?

The quest text says her head has cooled in death.

Commento di ChaosJackal

on 2016-04-15T16:57:46-05:00

You'd think Sally Whitemane would RESIST serving the Scourge, the enemy she's held a powerful grudge against for the longest time, more than most crusaders. Her parents succumbed to the plague, and she was forced to destroy them. Now, she willingly accepts fate as a new soldier of the undead?

What is this Blizzard?

The Knights of the Ebon Blade aren't the Scourge. Plus, Whitemane is implied to have basically gone crazy with guilt and anger after being forced to kill her family, and dying was, in a way, a chill pill. Plus, the world is about to end. I think she'd be capable of reconsidering her views a bit.

Commento di Darktbs

on 2016-04-15T20:01:50-05:00

This Dk questline,Nazgrim is so cool!And Thorás is such a badass! I'm a main Dk and this make me so proud ;-;pls show us Tirion and Whitemane in action!

Commento di perculia

on 2016-04-15T20:46:22-05:00

If you are discussing the DK video, please use our spoiler tags:

I'll try to remember to add a note to that as we highlight more info.

Re videos - so Kolira is not actually related to the other three quests (the title is meant to suggest "these are DK order quests, some of which are about koltira, some of which are about horsemen" not "these are DK order quests in which koltira interacts with horsemen"). Suggesting that a lore figure shows up (that isn't presumed dead) is vague enough I think to where it's fine. We try to keep the thumbnail images pretty vague as well so you can't tell what is going on in the story and these seemed ok as we haven't seen one character in game before and another looks quite different.

Re artifact calc - Our dev team is working hard on updating the site for calculators - there were pretty massive changes in this build, and our main guy who handled Legion updates left a few weeks ago to switch industries. Our replacement is cool and has been handling the regular data updates just fine, but this build is pretty challenging for someone brand new. The devs have been working overtime on it and it's a priority for them (which has led the content team to find more cool in-game stuff to post about so the readers aren't bored).

Commento di Lostelf

on 2016-04-15T21:02:06-05:00

Horde DK's have to betray their own faction? That sucks.

Commento di Joshmaul

on 2016-04-15T23:54:51-05:00

Horde DK's have to betray their own faction? That sucks.

To be fair, Nazgrim betrayed us first. Maybe he wasn't as insane (or corrupted, which is about the same thing) as Garrosh, but he chose the orc supremacist over the rest of the Horde, and he paid for it. Consider his undeath to be a form of atonement for what those who fought (and killed) him consider to be his greatest mistake: Putting the Warchief ahead of the Horde.

Commento di Rankkor

on 2016-04-16T00:45:24-05:00

Whelp, I just saw that awesome video of the DK Class Hall Campaign, and HOLY #$%& THAT'S A LOT OF STUFF HAPPENING!!!!!!.

Because I need to rant/ramble about it, I'll just type it here under spoiler tags.

It shows the raising of 3 of the Four Horsemen, and the rescue of Koltira.

Rescuing Koltira:

well, that was anti-climactic. I mean, if it was this easy, why didn't anyone do it before? Thassarian decides to bust Koltira out of the undercity, because he's needed and Sylvanas has refused any attempts at negotiating his release. Turns out it was as easy as going into the UC from the back sewer, turning right, going to the laboratory under the royal quarter, slaying a single abomination guarding it, opening Koltira's cage, and having him use the Death Gate spell. No drama, no fuss, no alarms. Nobody even knows we're there, since a total of like 6 ghouls and 4 abominations are all that stands along the way.

(Sylvanas should really think of plugging that thing up, its tactical benefit is questionable at best, and this is the second time an invading force gets through her city with impunity. I mean..... sheesh at the very least put more people guarding that thing than a single dumb abomination that can easily be enslaved by a Death Knight.)

If it was that easy, why has nobody done this before?

Raising Nazgrim

Very straightforward, we just go to his grave in Durotar, raise him, tell him that the legion has returned, and he says (Paraphrased) "You talk too much. If this world that I fought, bled, and died for, is in danger once more, then my eternal rest will have to wait. Into battle I go, once more".

Raising Sally Whitemane

This one was more interesting. Because on this one we have a double-goal. Not only do we raise whitemane, we also finish off "Officially" the scarlet crusade. Yep. Thassarian deems that this deranged cult of maniacs has tormented and terrorized the world long enough, so we kill 2 birds with one stone, getting whitemane, and putting the rest of these rabid dogs to the ground, torching the monastery on top of it.

I can only imagine the reaction of the Scarlet Crusaders when they see my character :P Bear in mind that at this point, my Blood Elf Dk has: Utterly decimated their forces in the scarlet enclave, completely obliterated their forces in New Hearthglenn, absolutely annihilated every single man and woman they had on the Scarlet Harbor, went back to the Scarlet Monastery during MoP to finish the job, and now is back AGAIN to the same monastery to finish them up for good. I can just imagine every single one of those crusaders going "WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM US MAN?!?!?!?!"

Ejem........Sally's reaction to being raised is more interesting. As it turns out, death gave her a lot of perspective over all the crap she did in life, and now she's filled with regret, and believes to be unworthy of being among the living once again. Thassarian however, says that in fighting the legion, she can atone for her crimes, and maybe even find redemption for her soul. While she's hesitant that a soul as tainted as hers can ever be redeemed, she's willing to find out.

And so comes the final chapter, of the Scarlet Crusade.

Ironically, it was Trollbane the one who provided by far the heaviest plot bombs. One of them I did not see coming. If any of ye reading this wanted to one day see Stromgarde rise again...... well.......... you got it. Maybe not in the way you wanted, but you got it.

Raising Thoras Trollbane

Turns out Prince Galen has seceded from the forsaken!!!! Moreover, he took with him all the other forsaken that were raised from Stromgardian citizens, formed an impromptu militia, and marched his forces towards Stromgarde, and conquered it. He kicked out the Syndicate, and kicked out the Ogres. And yes, he slayed the last living members of Stromgarde, and raised them as forsaken. How the hell he managed that without a valkyr, don't ask me. The game doesn't elaborate. He proclaimed himself "King" of stromgarde, and declared his independence. From the horde, the alliance, and anyone else. He says his kingdom is now sovereign land, and neither sylvanas, nor varian, nor anyone has any say on the fate of their lands.

When the knights of the Ebon Blade go to ask permission to access his father's grave (which can only be accessed with Trol'kalar, which is in Galen's hands) he says he'll agree only if you help him get rid of the last intruders in his kingdom. Turns out he was only able to clear out the segments of Stromgarde held by the syndicate and ogres. The trolls were too much for him and he can't get them out............

/facepalm

You do realize you have a sword, legendary for carving trolls like butter.

*sighs*

Whatever, we clear the trolls out, behead their leader, and then........ he just had to be stupid. Yep, in a strange turn of events, he says "Stromgarde is MINE, and neither Sylvanas, nor my father will take it back from me!!!!" and sics his guards on us. So we kill his paltry "honor guard", chase him to the Stromgardian chapel, have a final showdown, and he whines that we can't do this to him, he's king dammit!!!! >_>

I must add that Nazgrim is a complete BAMF both here and in the scarlet monastery, he's able to use Asphyxiate on multiple targets at once. Just like Saurfang Jr in Icecrown. Hey blizzard, when do we get THAT talent? *wink-wink*

We recover Trol'kalar from Galen's corpse, go to his father's grave, raise him, and what do you think its the first thing he asks us?

"Where's my son? Where's Galen? Where is the prince that murdered his king?"

Hmm....... I did NOT see this coming. Ohh galen, you sneaky little #$%&er. You betrayed your old man, you betrayed sylvanas, you betrayed the very knights who helped you secure your kingdom. Now I don't feel like such a scumbag for having to kill you............ Again.

Anyhows, Thoras is apparently cut from the same cloth as Nazgrim. His kingdom may be dead and barren, but he'll be damned if he's just gonna sleep beneath the earth while a bunch of demons plan to take root on HIS soil. He'll fight. He does quite a display during the assault on the Scarlet Monastery I may add.

Sweet merciful god, that was a lot of stuff for just ONE Class Hall Campaign. There's still 11 more for the other classes. And this particular campagin is incomplete, since there's still Tirion left, and a few other stuff too.

Maybe Legion wont be as bad after all.

Horde DK's have to betray their own faction? That sucks.

Nope. No betrayal. Sylvanas had no right to kidnap Koltira, we're simply getting him back.

Commento di Interest

on 2016-04-16T04:53:26-05:00

We recognize that all of these changes are pretty scary, and we’ve been in the MMO business long enough at this point to know better than to assume we’ll get everything right on the first try.

Whoa is that humility? I was expecting...something else.

Playful mocking aside, Lore's statements are going to be my focus here and tbh it seems to fall well under my theory that Legion is part of the "WoW rebuild" phase. What this phase entails is a part of a process that has essentially been going on since around Wrath: Make the game more approachable, remove and rework, rebuild older concepts using a more modern game development philosophy. We are currently in the latter phase.

Commento di Eighjan

on 2016-04-16T05:12:36-05:00

We recognize that all of these changes are pretty scary, and we’ve been in the MMO business long enough at this point to know better than to assume we’ll get everything right on the first try.

Whoa is that humility? I was expecting...something else.

Playful mocking aside, Lore's statements are going to be my focus here and tbh it seems to fall well under my theory that Legion is part of the "WoW rebuild" phase. *What this phase entails is something that has essentially been going on since around Wrath: make the game more approachable, remove and rework, rebuild older concepts using a more modern game development philosophy.

*QFE

When a game gets as popular as WoW has and hardware allows for things like graphics to give better visuals, you don't re-write it overnight... you have to wait for a plateau in future Expansion content & hardware progress to catch up & get stuff the way you want it (racial models, etc).

As for giving our characters deeper meaning, etc I welcome this move as it give alt's - in particular - a raison d'être other than for professions, gold farming, etc. Granted, some like playing multiple Classes, but this level of character immersion is something that has been missing since the days of Warrior Stance Quests (by way of example) to flesh out what each Class' true purpose is.

Long may this process continue... and the more players who get on board with this concept being slow & steady, the BETTER.

Commento di jaraii

on 2016-04-16T05:16:18-05:00

My thoughts on the pruning section: This has got to be the most pleasant news I've seen on WoW in YEARS! I have been gradually being less and less interested in the expansions lately, to the point I played WoD for a grand total of about 3 weeks, before putting WoW back on the shelf. I honestly have to say that as much as the feedback is important in refining the new content, I truly hope blizzard doesn't let peoples unwillingness to lose their toys restrict the outstanding vision that these recent messages on pruning hint at.

It will be nice to actually play as a distinct character with a distinct lore behind why they do things the way they do again. Things drifted into the realm of everyone was basically the same dress-up dolls that just had different models, with a little different flair to doing the same basic things. I am perfectly fine not being able to counter everything in the world, or even a quarter of it, as long as we can do things that our opponents can't all counter as well. (With the exception of stuns, these really don't belong in PvP. Taking away the ability to respond in a contest of responses is entirely counter-intuitive and the entire reason I don't PvP any more, but I digress.)

I eagerly await more news, and am actively trying to get as many characters up to the current level cap as possible so that I can experience all the awesome differences that seems to be coming up with Legion. Hopefully at least that part of the expac lives up to the hype as much as the artwork has so far.

Commento di Interest

on 2016-04-16T05:19:18-05:00

We recognize that all of these changes are pretty scary, and we’ve been in the MMO business long enough at this point to know better than to assume we’ll get everything right on the first try.

Whoa is that humility? I was expecting...something else.

Playful mocking aside, Lore's statements are going to be my focus here and tbh it seems to fall well under my theory that Legion is part of the "WoW rebuild" phase. *What this phase entails is something that has essentially been going on since around Wrath: make the game more approachable, remove and rework, rebuild older concepts using a more modern game development philosophy.

*QFE

When a game gets as popular as WoW has and hardware allows for things like graphics to give better visuals, you don't re-write it overnight... you have to wait for a plateau in future Expansion content & hardware progress to catch up & get stuff the way you want it (racial models, etc).

As for giving our characters deeper meaning, etc I welcome this move as it give alt's - in particular - a raison d'être other than for professions, gold farming, etc. Granted, some like playing multiple Classes, but this level of character immersion is something that has been missing since the days of Warrior Stance Quests (by way of example) to flesh out what each Class' true purpose is.

Long may this process continue... and the more players who get on board with this concept being slow & steady, the BETTER.To be fair Blizzard hasn't exactly done this process well over the years. The game has gotten noticeably more anti-social in the process (even ignoring the whole Garrison debacle), among other issues. Also, they're running out of time to remake and retain a lasting impression that folks would likely consider the magic of enjoyment that engrossed them in the World of Warcraft. It's just nice to have some confirmation bias that they've wisened up.

Commento di Azbott

on 2016-04-16T07:22:51-05:00

So regarding the DK chain...

I personally felt, the raisings were a bit anti-climactic and those being raised (with maybe the exception of Whitemane) didn't really question what was going on and accepted too readily.

Truth be told I was expecting us to find the potential Horseman's resting place, make contact with their spirit, inform them of what was going on, offer them the choice and then raise them as a Deathknight if they accepeted. As it turned out we just go to the grave, raise them straight to the flesh, tell them " 'cause Legion" and off we go. What if they chose not to accept?

I dunno, It just didn't scream out to me powerful warriors, choosing to damn themselves for all eternity in order to save their world and I feel maybe theyve missed a trick.

Commento di Grabovsky

on 2016-04-16T08:21:26-05:00

Lore's response to the massive pruning is just a joke. Its not a couple of abiliies, they are draining most classes of more than half of their abilities. And his feedback advice is a idiotic. Yes, a lot of people complaining on the forums about ability pruning are simple. But there have been extremely detailed posts about every single ability they have or are going to get rid of telling blizz why removing them is a bad thing. I thought that Lore working at blizz would be some kind of change in how blizz talks to us. But they have turned him into more of the same. Just about lost all my respect for him.